Posted 12:38 am Saturday, July 18, 2009
God Is Dead — Darwinian Evolution A ‘Failed Ideology'
A National Public Radio interview, a Nicolas Cage movie and a Smith County Bible study made me take another look last week at the so-called conversation over Darwinian evolution and faith. The "dialogue" is becoming an all-out battle looming on the horizon, like an ocean squall one can see miles from the coast before it reaches shore.
First the radio interview. In a 2008 broadcast, an evolutionary biologist admitted -- even lamented -- that the scientific community "was not doing such a good job" when it came to winning public opinion in support of evolution. About 70 percent of Americans, he said, were not convinced that evolution was valid. Antagonizing those still deciding about evolution, he added, by deriding them in public was not winning friends and influencing people. This was a refreshing, if not a distressingly belated, observation. Despite nearly 50 years of acerbic insistence that God Is Dead, or God Is Not Great, the idea of God yet persists.
Then there is the recent movie "Knowing" starring Nicholas Cage. I knew nothing of the film when I picked up a DVD this week other than film critic Roger Ebert was quoted saying it was a "superb suspense film."
So it was. But as I searched the Internet afterward to troll for opinions on this unique film, I was shocked to see the strongly vituperative and abusive comments from bloggers, I wondered what I'd missed. Watching "Knowing" again, I concluded the heavy-handed comments were unwarranted and started searching for another motivation.
Then the screenwriter Kevin Miller who wrote the Ben Stein film "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" came to teach a screenwriting workshop in Smith County this week. In an interview for the
Tyler Morning Telegraph, Miller said that the most vile and vicious comments he'd ever read were applied to his film, surprising him.
"But when you suggest to those who adhere to the failed ideology of evolutionary biology that not allowing ideas is narrow minded," he told me, "that's what happens."
Miller's blunt "failed ideology" comment was a frontal assault on evolution, something regarded as anti-intellectual in past years. But the gloves are coming off. A Tyler church with a large congregation recently showed a DVD Bible study series by Dr. Del Tackett called The Truth Project. In it, Tacket makes the astonishing prediction that evolution will eventually be shown as "the greatest fraud of the 20th century."
Step back from whether you agree with Miller, Tackett, Stein or the presuppositions of "Knowing." I've said for years in Another Look that it's not what I think that's important; it's what "they" think. Let's take another look at what "they" think.
First, even a scientist adhering to evolutionary theory admitted about three of four Americans simply do not buy it. That's an amazing thought coming through NPR, considering we are inundated through film, education, books and other media that evolution is a no longer just a theory and "the debate is closed." Evidently far from it.
How will this "discussion" be waged? You can see it in the negative reviews of "Knowing," a film of which I had no knowledge and, as an unprepared observer, thought stimulating. But I have an open-system perspective of the universe, that is; I'm open to the idea that God exists.
That's the rub for some Darwinian evolutionists who like to stress condescendingly that God is a fairy tale told to keep little children from being frightened. These are the same ones, I believe, who make the vicious comments "when threatened," said Miller, with the idea that God exists.
In a heartening development, God is coming back to the table as a viable option in mainstream media. In June, a prominent Newsweek column was headlined, "Let's Talk About God." A
USA Today "Focus on Faith, Religion and Spirituality" weekly column to "illuminate the national conversation" about God began in July.
Suddenly it seems God is back on the table of discussion. Not as a point of derision, but as a subject of thought towards the meaning of life. This is a welcome relief from the increasingly scathing attacks by some toward those who believe a living God is as normal to life as the next breath they take.
I've said for years that ideas are important and not benign. Those who hate "Knowing" seem to realize that. Movies are stories illustrating viewpoints of what we value -- or don't. Those who think ideas are harmless never had to endure the Soviet Union, where millions of citizens died at the hands of despotic rulers who tried to force their vision of a utopian Godless life on a helpless population.
There are still Russians today who feel the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century was the fall of the Soviet Union. For some, living through a failed ideology, such as Communism, can be painful to the point where the preservation of a viewpoint is more important than the truth that could set them free. We can expect vicious anti-religious attacks to increase in the decade to come if communication and persuasion tactics do not change.
